1. "Quick Lizzie Question"
Posted by Benjamin on Aug-18th-03 at 7:28 PM

I was reading through the Inquest statements and also looking at some articles and one states that Lizzie had black hair. I have also seen her listed as a Famous Red-head.  Was Miss Clairol around back then?  I know Lizzie would think she was worth it!  What was her real hair color?

We went over Lizzie's hair with a fine tooth comb & never
did figure out what her real color was. Back then they called
it black & reddish and "nut brown" -- I always think of her
as being red haired, probably from the Legend movie, but
several of the books call her red headed, too. I think
everyone was thinking maybe it was the hair stuff she
used that made her color look different & maybe the light
from her hats & clothes & such.









(Message last edited Aug-18th-03  8:49 PM.)

We finally checked the arrest record and found her description to be 5'4" and light hair with gray eyes and light complexion.
http://www.lizzieandrewborden.com/lizartifactsassets/arrestbk1.jpg

We also found a citation to another reference to *light* as a hair color, contemporanious, and it  turned out it meant light brown.

Only her hairdresser knows for sure

Few of the authors on the case agree as to the color. 

Kent and Radin, as nut-brown (Kent) and nut-brown with a reddish tint (Radin).

Lincoln and Brown describe it as red.

Sullivan as reddish and Spiering as dark reddish.

Pearson as light brown.

Evening Standard, Aug. 30 - medium brown.

i.e. You get to pick your favorite Lizzie color. I'm inclined to believe Kent and Radin.

Hasn't henna been around for thousands of years? Was tinting unknown in those days? Would Lizzie's use imply breaking their cultural code?
...
Imagine this conversation:
"I don't know if she is guilty, but she TINTS her hair!"

(Message last edited Aug-19th-03  12:46 PM.)

Quick Lizzie Question #2 & 3 -

We know Lizzie claimed there was a note which came for Abby calling her away from the house.
The search for that note was a big deal and authorities were suspicious.

Alice at trial, 394:
A.  When we were in the dining room Lizzie was lying down, and I think Dr. Bowen came in---I always thought it was Dr. Bowen---came in and said, "Lizzie, do you know anything about the note your mother had?" And she hesitated and said, well, no, she didn't. He said, "I have looked in the wastebasket," and I think I said---no, he said, "Have you looked in her pocket?" And I think I said, "Well, then she must have put it in the fire." And Lizzie said, "Yes, she must have put it in the fire."

--My first question is:  If Lizzie had burned anything Thursday, would she point authorities directly to the fire?  Admittedly, it was Alice's suggestion...but Lizzie went along with it.
--Next question is:  What is meant by "Have you looked in her pocket?" and why is there no answer here to this question?

Both good questions Kat.

Since I don't believe there was a note Lizzie would have no qualms about Bowen or anyone else looking in the stove.

Can't figure out why no answer was given to the question but maybe Alice didn't tell every word said.  But why would he ask Lizzie or Alice that  when neither had ever gone to the guest room to look in Abby's pockets?

I know how much we love Lincoln here, but, perhaps there is a grain of something here: A Private Disgrace, Lincoln pg 115 to 116:

"Dr. Bowen asked, "Did you look in her pocket?"  (Her handbag, he meant; he was antebellum in his speech, and he used the word as in "Lucy Locket lost her pocket, Kitty Fisher found it.")
     This, you observe, was an odd question.  When a woman goes out, she takes her handbag with her.  Moreover, one curious enough to search theat small house of many rooms to find and read a letter sent to another could scarcely, in the course of the search, have avoided finding a large dead body as well.
   Lizzie did not find the question odd.  On the contrary, she admitted promptly and unblushingly that she had even looked in Mrs. Borden's "pocker" with simple intent to read her private correspondence.   Yada, yada, yada...Miss Russell (whose friends all remembered her as exceptionally gentle and percipient) said quickly, "Well, then, she must have put it in the fire."  "


Perhaps when Dr. Bowen asked Lizzie this question, he did mean Abby's purse, but, Lizzie understood it like we do today as a pocket in her skirt.  Perhaps Lizzie gave the good doctor one of those looks, like, are you mad?  Me, dig around a corpse? 

I don't know your age and experience. You SHOULD know that not everything you read in the paper is 1000% accurate. Reporters then (and now?) never let the facts get in the way of a good story.
Newspapers are a business, not an academic historical institute.

Truth, like beauty and justice, is often in the eye of the beholder.

Well, that's why I was asking what her real hair color was. I know not to trust newspapers 100%.  I wondered if there was some other source that would state the facts, like personal letters or diaries or something.

A few years ago I read some of Dashiell Hammett's detective stories. In quite a few of them, a red-haired women is a sign of a villainess. (AC Doyle's "Copper Beeches"?) Did being red-haird have similar connotations as being "platinum blonde" today?

Nothing intended against any blondes, even if they don't have more fun.

That's a good point about red-haired villainesses.  I remember when Disney was still in production for The Little Mermaid and there were huge discussions and meetings about the controversy of making a Disney heroine a red-head. And this was the mid- 1980s.

Well thanks Susan but I think Lincoln might be full of bologna here.
She creates an answer out of nothing.  Not only that, she pushs a *fact* that Lizzie admitted looking in Mrs. Borden's purse?!
That was Emma.  Lizzie looked nowhere.*
The odd thing is Bowen should have looked in Abby's pocket.  Didn't he put his hands on her?

Har, then you think nothing was burned Thursday by Lizzie?  None of that brouhaha about *cylindrical objects*, *hatchet handles*, or anything incriminating maybe put there by Bowen as the contents of his pocket?
Lizzie's not going to basically agree with Alice that they might as well look in the fire for the note if she herself had put anything in there.
Some still speculate there was a dress burned that day, etc.
I think Lizzie probably wouldn't refer to the fire, call attention to the fire, if there was anything in there connected to her.

*Trial
Emma
1566
Q.  Have you ever caused any search to be made for the note that your stepmother was said to have received that day?
A.  I think I only looked in a little bag that she carried downstreet with her sometimes, and in her workbasket.

Yes, she is totally full of it when she states that Lizzie said that she looked, I checked through all of the source docs and there is NO reference to Lizzie answering that question or looking.  My point was just that maybe Dr. Bowen confused Lizzie with that question, hence no answer from her and Alice oddly jumping in with her "threw it in the fire" bit.

Yes, it is rather odd that what was in Andrew's pockets is listed and for Abby there is nothing.  I would think if she just received a note and was getting ready to go, she would put it in her skirt pocket to free up both hands. 

Hi Rays From what I've read henna has been around a longgggg time so yes it was available for Lizzie's use. I'm more inclined to believe the arrest report description of Lizzie than any other. In some of her pics she does appear to have a soft (somewhat light) hair color so perhaps it was a very light brown or "dishwater" blonde.

I was trying to find a now-extinct web-site on red-heads because they claimed Lizzie for their own.  They had been written from here, I believe, and asked their source for claiming Lizzie.
The site is now gone.
But if you google search "red-heads" you will get sexy babes as if that is all they're good for on the Internet!
In the 40's, villainesses, in the 2000's x-rated girls.

Yes, I sent that site an email eons ago questioning them on how they knew for sure that Lizzie was a redhead.  I'm still awaiting a reply. 

Yes it sounds like an answer was given, it really does because Alice, when Lizzie is asked, "Have you looked in her pocket?" --, her answer is "And I think I said, "Well, then she must have put it in the fire."

The "Well then" shows an answer and yet she skips it. It shows that some reply had been made like "Yes, it wasn't there."  Or "I didn't look there, but the police did", or something that proves it wasn't in the pocket.
If it was Emma being asked, it might make the sense Susan offered because Emma could say she had looked other places and it wasn't there.
Then we could have a response such as "Well then, it must...blah blah blah."
Maybe Alice is glossing something over here.

I think you might be on to something, Kat!  Maybe you can find Lizzie's elusive answer somewhere, I tried.  I'm wondering where Abby normally kept her handbag (pocket), close at hand like in the kitchen or up in her room?  And if Lizzie did search it innocently, wouldn't she have wondered why Abby didn't take it with her?  I know a few women who don't ever carry purses except possibly special occasions, everything goes in their pockets.  I on the other hand never leave the house without it.  One of my favorite fun ones is an old license plate that was bent and riveted together to make a small purse, its really a neat item. 

That's a good question about Abby's handbag.  If it was out in the open anyone could know Abby didn't leave the house.
But if there was as much suspicion in that house as we are led to believe by the locking of doors, Abby wouldn't leave it around.
If it was locked away, the question becomes why would Abby receive a note, go upstairs (say) and unlock her door and get her purse and put it in there, leave the bag there, lock the door and go downstairs to the dining room in order to tell Bridget to wash the windows and ask Lizzie what she wanted for dinner?
Yes she would put it in her pocket.

As to why Alice skips that answer I don't know...

Yes, thats my thought, if Abby's purse is just lying around, there can't really be much of importance in there, like money and such.  And if its just lying around, Abby probably didn't leave the house.  If it was in her room, Lizzie would have to get the key from the sitting room, go upstairs, unlock the door and possibly go into Mrs. Borden's dressing room to get at her purse to look through it, thats an awful lot of trouble to just satisfy and idle curiousity.  If Lizzie was so curious about this, why didn't she just ask Abby in the first place when she told her she had a note?  I'm also wondering what a lady of the time period would carry in her purse, certainly not makeup, but, what?  Money, keys, a hankie, maybe some Eau de Cologne, maybe a needle and thread?

I don't think anyone ever really asked where Abby's purse was, wouldn't the police officers want to verify that indeed there was no note there?  We know Emma did, why not them too? 

My faulty memory says my Mom did not take a pocketbook, or dress up, when she went to visit her cousins on the next block (they lived in adjoining houses). That's about 50 years ago in a small town neighborhood that no longer exists.
...
If one of you ladies were to just visit a neighbor, what would you do?
I grew up in a similar neighborhood where nobody locked their doors during the day. (Retired grandparents lived next door.)

(Message last edited Sep-23rd-03  11:32 AM.)

On Antiques Roadshow last night (er, Monday night), there was a woman who collected old clothing and old sewing examples.  She had an 1805 (?) apron which was worth quite a lot because they were pretty disposable after a lot of use.
Then she had *pockets*.  They were worth a lot also, as they don't normally survive.
They were long, and tied at the waist.  They were worn inside the skirt and we were informed the outer skirt had slits in the sides at the hips so the hand could slip into the pocket (which was a separate piece of apparel).
The appraiser also stated the rhyme which Susan brought up earlier about Lucy Locket lost her pocket.  That, I gather, the pocket could fall off and be lost (?).
They omitted the date of this pocket though.

Thanks, Kat, thats pretty cool, I never heard of that before, an actual seperate pocket.  From what I recall, by Lizzie's day, pockets were sewn into skirts like a pocket you would find in a pair of pants.  Theres actually reference to this in the Trial where they are talking about Lizzie's Bengaline skirt, the "smooch" over the pocket.  I also remember reading about fan pockets that were sewn into skirts.  Wish Edisto was here, she might have quite a bit to say on this.